How South Africa’s Future is Changing, One Student at a Time

For the country’s top hotels and resorts, local community outreach is a no-brainer, and education is seen as one of the most effective methods toward lasting change.

It’s blessed with some of the world’s most incredible beauty and phenomenal luxury accommodations. But there are more reasons the African continent’s most multiethnic country should be on your bucket list. You can do good while you experience everything amazing—from gorgeous hotels to breathtaking safaris to wine country and the hip city of Cape Town. South Africa is also undeniably a complicated and still-forming nation, leaving a wide swath of its populace to still face crippling poverty and a serious lack of opportunity. For the country’s top hotels and resorts, local community outreach is a no-brainer, and education is seen as one of the most effective methods toward lasting change.

Ellerman House

“In South Africa it’s important for all businesses to have a link to social responsibility,” says Martine Schaffer, CEO of the Click Foundation, formed in 2011 by the owners of Cape Town’s extraordinary Ellerman House, Paul Harris and family. Using the latest technology and innovative approaches, the Click Foundation aims to reach in-need kids directly and locally, in ways that can ideally then be scaled nationally to help more children.

Currently the foundation works with 38 schools, 9 early childhood development centers, and 22 after school environments. “We try and work with specific districts within a region,” says Schaffer. “This way we are hoping to impact more than just one school but a number of schools within an area.”

Since its launch, the Click Foundation’s main educational tool has been the Australian-innovated Reading Eggs program, an online application that teaches reading skills to kids through a series of fun and lively interactive lessons.

It is our most important initiative, because no schooling can take place if a learner is unable to read.

Changing Lives with Reading Eggs

Changing Lives with Reading Eggs

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“However this year we will also be introducing math for the learners in some of our environments, and hope to get results by intervening at this early stage on the two fundamentals required for education.”

Since art is another of the Harris family’s key passions (indeed, the Ellerman House’s own art collection is valued at three times the worth of the glimmering property itself),

it’s only fitting that art should play a major role in the ongoing success of the Click Foundation. Each year the Ellerman House hosts the star-studded ArtAngels fundraising auction, which has been instrumental in growing the Click Foundation at a rapid pace. “At the end of 2015 we had reached just under 13,000 learners nationwide,” says Schaffer. “Our target is to at the very least double the numbers this year.”

Ellerman House Art Gallery

About 30 miles east of Cape Town just outside of Stellenbosch, another of South Africa’s most elegant properties, the Delaire Graff Estate, takes a more localized approach to its community outreach. In 2008 owner Laurence Graff (also the chairman of Graff Diamonds) launched the FACET Foundation, which works with local aid organization Pebbles Project to provide assistance to children and families living in the winelands farming communities of the Western Cape.

“The charity helps to enrich the lives of children and young people with special education needs, in particular those whose lives are affected by alcohol,” says Tanja Mackay-Davidson, Delaire Graff’s marketing and PR manager. “The aim is to make a significant and lasting difference through education, ensuring each child has greater potential and a bright future.”

FACET mobile learning center

In partnership with Pebbles Project, last year FACET launched two mobile learning centers – one a book borrowing library, the other a computer lab fitted with laptops – and has green-lighted three more vehicles. “By enabling children to access information online, they not only have the facilities to complete their school assignments, but their opportunities for educational growth have increased significantly,” says Mackay-Davidson. “The books meanwhile encourage children to practice their reading skills at home, inspiring creativity and imagination. By developing these skill sets, the children have the confidence and capabilities to progress to further education.” The vehicles currently visit 11 farms in the Western Cape Winelands region, benefitting more than 1,200 children and adults.

It’s something that would greatly please the country’s post-apartheid founding father, Nelson Mandela, who famously called education “the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

Across the country in and around the renowned Kruger National Park, South Africa’s four incredible Singita lodges (Ebony and Boulders at Sabi Sand, and Lebombo and Sweni within Kruger) work with the company’s Singita Community Development Trust on numerous charitable projects. One of these, the Growing to READ initiative, targets support for early childhood development (or ECD) in local communities.

“Research has shown that ECD is a critical phase of a child’s development, from a cognitive, social and physical perspective,” says Singita Community Development director Pam Richardson. “Growing to READ aims to ensure that these children are school-ready when they commence formal schooling at the Grade R [kindergarten] or Grade 1 level. They need to be readied to fly!”

Singita Ebony Lodge Wildlife

Pebbles Project

Singita Ebony Lodge

Pebbles Project

Singita Ebony Lodge

Singita Ebony Lodge

Singita Ebony Lodge

Singita Ebony Lodge

Rather than providing education directly to children, Growing to READ helps local teachers, school administrators and parents to be better equipped to educate their students, which last year numbered around 2,000. Launched in 2007, the program is executed by the broader South African NGO the READ Educational Trust. In all, 20 ECD schools receive support, located in Justicia, Lilydale and Mabharule on the outskirts of the Sabi Sand reserve, and in the Welverdiend and Hluvukani villages on the edge of the Kruger National Park.

While they won’t solve South Africa’s problems overnight, and they may at this point reach just a fraction of the country’s in-need children, important outreach programs like these continue to sprout up nationwide, bringing hope and brighter futures to growing legions of kids. It’s something that would greatly please the country’s post-apartheid founding father, Nelson Mandela, who famously called education “the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

For the last 15 years Dan Allen’s life has been aimed at inspiring folks to do more than travel—from travel journalism to documenting LGBT culture travel around the world to living abroad. Catch Dan’s storytelling prowess on his site, danallen.ink